RE: [CH] Recycle & Reuse

T. Matthew Evans (matt.evans@ce.gatech.edu)
Fri, 3 Aug 2001 09:41:31 -0400 

> Luke,
>    Hope you'll bear with me 'cause I've learned a lot of e-mail shorthand
> but what's FWIW & VOC's. Sorry to here you Aussie's are hurting your
> environment (as we in the Northern Hemisphere try to repair it). Around my
> area landfills (read depressions that municipalities decided to fill with
> toxic waste that leeches into ground water that they pump out of wells
> located nearby to citizens that are paying to remove toxic waste
> from there
> homes & paying to pump well water back into their homes as  "clean" water)

VOC's are volatile organic compounds -- trichloroethene, tetrachloroethene,
chlorobenzene, etc.  EPA Method 8015 is used to test for a few hundred of
these puppies in one fell swoop (gas chromatography, I believe).  These are
often the primary chemicals that migrate to groundwater from landfills
because they are highly mobile in soil gas (volatile, remember).  Also, very
prominent in new carpet, by the way.

I would like to state, however, that new landfills are orders of magnitude
cleaner than older ones, which were simply depressions filled with trash.
New landfills have 80-mil welded high density polyethylene liners underlain
by one to two feet of compacted clay.  Over the next few hundred years we
should see very little, if any, contaminant migration from a modern,
properly designed, properly constructed landfill.  Twenty years ago, no one
cared where their trash went as long as someone picked it up from their
house.  Now, no one wants the trash to go into a landfill because of
environmental concerns, but they still want someone to come pick their trash
up every week.

Often, these are people that still throw used chemical containers and dead
batteries in with their household waste.  These are generally the only
"toxic" chemicals that make it into modern municipal solid waste landfills.
The evil Corporate America is no longer allowed to dispose of their waste in
this manner, but millions of private residences illegally send thousands of
tons of toxic chemicals to landfills every year.

Sorry for the OT rant, but landfills put a roof over my head for many years
and I hate them always getting a bad rap.

Matt

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T. Matthew Evans
Geosystems Group, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
URL:  http://www.prism.gatech.edu/~gte964w
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